My Guantanamo Diary (32 page)

Al-Jazeera journalist Sami al-Haj remains at Guantánamo. He will
have been on hunger strike for one year as of January 7, 2008. Sami’s
imprisonment and forcefeeding has continued to cause public outrage
worldwide. U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota spoke out publicly
in support of al-Haj, calling for a hearing to prove the basis for the
journalist’s imprisonment and that of hundreds like him.

“If he’s a bad actor, prove it. If not, let him out,” Ellison said to
the Associated Press in November 2007, declaring that it seemed al-
Haj was being held only for being a journalist and a cameraman.
²

In late June 2007, Bahraini prisoner Jumah al-Dossary sliced his abdomen
with a metal shard, almost severing a major artery. It was
the thirty-three-year-old’s twelfth suicide attempt. He was rushed to
the hospital after guards found him unconscious. A few weeks later,
al-Dossary was released from Gitmo and handed over to the Saudi
government (he is a dual citizen of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia).

Today, he alternates between a Riyadh rehabilitation center with
resortlike amenities and his family home, spending two weeks at a
time in each, which he will continue to do until his health improves.

His attorney, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, believes his transfer out of
Gitmo indicates his innocence.

“If the U.S. administration believed that Jumah was a threat to
our national security, he would still be at Guantánamo,” Colangelo-
Bryan said. “The fact that he was voluntarily sent home shows
clearly that there is no basis to believe that he poses any threat.”

1.
Brent Mickum, “Tortured, Humiliated and Crying Out for Some Justice,”
The Guardian
, January 12, 2005, and Associated Press images.

2.
See
www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/guantanamo-bay_delta.htm
.

3.
Ibid., and Associated Press images.

4
. See
www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/guantanamo-bay_delta.htm
.

5
. Ibid.

1
. See
www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/guantanamo-bay_delta.htm
.

2
. Ibid.

3.
Ibid.

1
. See “Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic (ASEC) Supplement,” U.S. Census Bureau,
http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032007/hhinc/new02_001.htm
.

1.
See
www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/guantanamo-bay_delta.htm
.

1.
United Nations World Population Prospects Report for 2006,
www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2006/WPP2006_Highlights_rev.pdf
.

2
. See
www.savethechildren.org
.

3.
See
www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/af.html
.

1.
See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3280439.stm.

2.
See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3051501.stm
.

3.
Mark Denbeaux, “A Profile of 517 Detainees through Analysis of Department of Defense Data,” Seton Hall University, School of Law,
http://law.shu.edu/aaafinal.pdf
.

4.
Autopsy details and interview quotets are based on European press reports.

5.
All statements by pathologists are from European media reports.

1.
Information provided by counsel at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

1.
Translation by Mahmood Khatib.

1.
A note on sources: All published statements made by Guantánamo detainees during attorney-client meetings were recorded and submitted to the Department of Justice for classification review.

2.
Thomas Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm That Kept Guantánamo Prisoners from Going Mad: Former Inmates Say They Wrote Thousands of Lines,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, July 17, 2005.

3.
N. C. Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba Beat the Heart of a Poet: Afghan,”
Washington Post Foreign Service
, April 24, 2005, A19.

4.
James Rupert, “Writers Jailed in 2002 for Political Satire,”
Newsday
, October 31, 2005.

5.
Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”

6.
Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”

7
. Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”

8
. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”

9
. Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”

10
. Sadaqat Jan, “Ex-Guantánamo Detainee Held Again,” Associated Press, December 27, 2006.

11
. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”

12
. Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”

13
. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”

14
. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”

15
. Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”

16
. Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.

17.
Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”

18
. Yusufzai Ashfaq, “Journalists Release Guantánamo Bay Report,”
Oneworld.net
, August 1, 2006.

19
. Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”

20.
Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.

21
. Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”

22.
Chicago Public Radio, “Habeas Shmabeas,”
This American Life
, March 10, 2006; Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.

23
. Harpoon Rashid, “Ex-inmates Share Guantánamo Ordeal,” BBC News, Peshawar, May 2, 2005.

24
. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”

25
. Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.

26
. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”

27
. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”

28
. Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.

29
. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”

30
. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”

31
. Rupert, “Writers Jailed.”

32
. Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.

33.
Rashid, “Ex-inmates Share.”

34
. Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.

35
. Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”

36
. Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.

37.
Coghlin, “Writing Poetry Was the Balm.”

38.
Aizenmann, “In a Jail in Cuba,” A19.

39
. Rashid, “Ex-inmates Share.”

40
. Rashid, “Ex-inmates Share.”

1.
Uighur names are changed to avoid harassment of their families by the Chinese government.

1.
“Sixteen Afghans Return Home from Guantánamo Alleging Torture,” Agence France-Presse, October 12, 2006,
http://humanrights.ucdavis.edu/projects/the-guantanamo-testimonials-project/testimonies/prisoner-testimonies/exhausted–16-afghans-freed-after-guantanamo
.

2.
Ben Fox, “Jailed Gitmo Journalist Gains Support,” Associated Press, November 1, 2007.

Mahvish Rukhsana Khan
is a recent law school graduate and journalist. She has published in the
Wall Street Journal
, the
New
York Times
, the
Washington Post
, and other media. She lives in San Diego.

PublicAffairs is a publishing house founded in 1997. It is a tribute to the standards, values, and flair of three persons who have served as mentors to countless reporters, writers, editors, and book people of all kinds, including me.

I. F. Stone, proprietor of
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, combined a commitment to the First Amendment with entrepreneurial zeal and I. F.
reporting skill and became one of the great independent journalists in American history. At the age of eighty, Izzy published
The
Trial of Socrates,
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It was Ben who gave the
Post
the range and courage to pursue such historic issues as Watergate. He supported his reporters with a tenacity that made them fearless and it is no accident that so many became authors of influential, best-selling books.

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The Washington Post
as “a redoubtable gadfly.” His legacy will endure in the books to come.

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Founder and Editor-at-Large